Twenty years ago today the people of the Soviet Union went to the polls, for the first free election since that day in January 1918 when the Bolsheviks disbanded the more or less freely elected Constituent Assembly.

As the BBC reported, it became clear early on that many official Communist candidates would lose, that Yeltsin would win handsomely in his own Moscow district and that the anti-corruption prosecutor in Uzbekistan, Telman Gdlyan (himself an Armenian), would get the largest majority in the country.

How hopeful it all seemed at the time and how much has changed since then in most post-Soviet countries.